O

1017

O’SULLIVAN, TIMOTHY HENRY

(1840–1882)
American photographer, probably born Ireland

While little evidence survives regarding the personal
life of photographer Timothy H. O’Sullivan, his pho-
tographic legacy is extensive. O’Sullivan was a major
fi gure in two areas of early American photography: the
documentation of the Civil War and the survey photog-
raphy of the American West.
From the outset, O’Sullivan’s personal life presents
more questions than answers. He was born in 1840,
probably in Ireland, to parents Jeremiah and Ann
O’Sullivan. His family moved to the United States in
1842, as part of the massive wave of immigrants who
fl ed the severe potato famine in Ireland. His birthplace
has been mistakenly reported as New York City, because
O’Sullivan himself made this claim on a questionnaire
when applying for work at the U.S. Treasury Depart-
ment, but O’Sullivan biographers have determined this
to be incorrect.
By the age of 18, O’Sullivan had begun working in
Mathew Brady’s photographic studio in Washington
D.C., which was being managed by Alexander Gardner.
The studio, like most in photography’s early years, was
dedicated to making portraits, but with the onset of the
Civil War, Brady turned his attention to the pursuit of
fi eld photography. By 1861, Gardner and O’Sullivan
both belonged to Brady’s “Photographic Corps” which
became known for its war views. Late in 1862 Gardner
had had a falling out with Brady and left to begin a
photographic business of his own. O’Sullivan continued
with Brady for a short time longer, but it is thought that
when Gardner opened his own studio in Washington in
May of 1863, O’Sullivan joined Gardner. O’Sullivan’s
work for Gardner included copying maps for the Union
Army’s strategic use, as well as making a variety of

views of the war including individual and group portraits

of military members and civilians engaged in the war,

views of camps, forts, bridges, railroads, buildings,

earthworks, towns, fi elds and plantations, and of changes

wrought by the war.

These photographs were published in Catalogue of

Photographic Incidents of the War from the Gallery of

Alexander Gardner, Photographer to the Army of the

Potomac, 1863 and Gardner’s Photographic Sketch

Book of the War, 1865/1866. Some of O’Sullivan’s most

memorable photographs were of the battlefi eld dead.

Perhaps his most famous, A Harvest of Death, made at

Gettysburg in 1863 and published in Gardner’s Photo-

graphic Sketch Book of the War, shows a fi eld littered

with bloated Union corpses. A mounted soldier and the

distant hills blur out of focus in the background. Instead

of using a standard eye-level viewpoint, O’Sullivan

has placed his camera close to the ground, bringing the

viewer nearer to the dead men. This low vantage point

also causes the battlefi eld to appear to rake steeply

upward, fi lling more of the picture plane. Rather than

aggrandize the heroics of war, O’Sullivan forces the

viewer to confront the reality of the war’s casualties.

Including this powerful image, O’Sullivan made a total

of forty-four negatives of the 100 published in Gardner’s

Photographic Sketch Book of the War, most of them

landscape views of architecture including forts, bridges,

railroad stations, churches, homes and tents employed

by the army during the war.

Beginning with his fi eld photography during the

civil war, and continuing into his survey photography,

Timothy O’Sullivan made glass plate collodion nega-

tives. This method, also known as wet-plate because of

the process of coating the glass with wet collodion just

prior to exposure in the camera, was particularly diffi cult

when employed in the fi eld. The coating process (as well

as the need to develop the negative immediately after